American farmers

[Yorkshire lad]

I'd rather watch YouTube than TV now and enjoy seeing farmers in other countries . I follow a quite few, Millennial Farmer and 10th Generation Dairyman being a couple of them.
What suprises me is how Americans use skidsteers as their main loaders. Surley loading shovels or telehanders would be more practical
They seem to very rarley use the 3 point hitch , even for light implements and tow small tedders and seed drills ect with a clevis draw bar
The PUH was a godsend when it was brought out. I am supprised that PUH 's have not made it over the pond

 

[Hilly]

I'd rather watch YouTube than TV now and enjoy seeing farmers in other countries . I follow a quite few, Millennial Farmer and 10th Generation Dairyman being a couple of them.
What suprises me is how Americans use skidsteers as their main loaders. Surley loading shovels or telehanders would be more practical
They seem to very rarley use the 3 point hitch , even for light implements and tow small tedders and seed drills ect with a clevis draw bar
The PUH was a godsend when it was brought out. I am supprised that PUH 's have not made it over the pond

Great I hate 3pl much better towing imo . They do seem to like skidys . I also prefer watching these guys to tv .

 

[Prairie]

Why do you need telehandler or loading shovel when there is plenty of land to spread everything out on, not all the land has to be farmed. 3 point hitches are no good on implements when they are as wide as most are these days, corners are driven round rarely does the implement get lifted and backed into a corner, when hitching up, you still have to get off to plug the hydraulics in is the reason most given for not using pickup hitches. I also wonder if they would be strong enough for large implements. Just think modern seeding rigs are over 50tonnes in weight when fully loaded.

 

[le bon paysan]

Watching most farming operations lorries are used, or 4 wheel trailers which are self unloaders. Grain farmers use bottom unloading trailers normally 4wheelers. Watch Sandi Brock videos doing silage all 4wheelers and quick release on draw bar, side unload in to an ag bag filler. Most cereals go in to bins for on farm storage. When Scott Welker (leg arms)broke his arm under a draw bar that was a draw bar! Big american tractors are just big tugs.

 

[Hilly]

They seem to use their pickups a lot for feeding cattle as well .

 

[le bon paysan]

They seem to use their pickups a lot for feeding cattle as well .

And hauling.!

 

[Hilly]

And hauling.!

They have some great trailers !

 

[Tomr10]

You look at millennial farmed jd and it has solid 3 point hitch nor ball and clip,

not really watched any of them that have smaller farms.

larson farms planter is 3point hitch mounted.

As for skid steers it did suppries me but they are much more use in sheds easier to move behind a pick up and like said don’t have to reach over stuff.
Farm fixing has one of each

 

[cousinjack]

They just use different methods ...

grain is (nearly) always moved with augers.
Even when the Welkers do use their shovel, they don’t seem to worried about spilling a bit !!

Chems for the sprayers are usually done in bulk - and the water carried on artic trailers ..

the skiddys are just used for general lifting/shifting and never handle too much weight, but are very manuverable.. and probably cheaper to run than a tele...

they also have the space / access to make use of the trucks. Those bottom dump trailers are again, simple, but take a lot of room..

they also don’t seem to swap implements like we do over here, so PUH is not as useful. And drawbar must be cheaper ..

Horses for courses ...

 

[Crex]

The 3 point hitch quick fit things they have seem interesting. We don't seem to have ones that size here.

 

[76masseyman]

The 3 point hitch as we know it ( Ferguson ) was ok in its day, to enable light tractors to transfer the weight of the implement to the drive wheels of the tractor. Not so much later on as implements that got wider and wider, instead of the smaller ones straight behind the tractor, that needed wheels for depth control.
John Deere has the idea of implement lift and depth control being controlled by a single ram from the tractor scv’s. Why have a fairly expensive hydraulic lift on the tractor when it could control a ram on the implement, and that ram could be moved to any machine required. One hydraulic cylinder on one tractor, but it would lift the plough out of work, the cultivator, grain drill etc.
It didn’t help that, before standardisation, that some manufacturers chose their own styles of implement attachment, but they all had the same principle for attaching trailed machines.

 

[Blaithin]

Unless things have changed I’m fairly sure PUH are illegal here. Maybe also Stateside.

Think I looked it up years ago when someone first talked about them on here and I had no clue wtf it was.

Also knowing how hydraulics are sucking right now in the cold... I can only imagine a PUH leaving you stranded. Size could also be an inhibiting factor. Field equipment being quiet a bit larger.

 

[Lowland1]

When i was in the states in the early ‘90s all the farms i worked on had the 3 point quick hitch on their tractors although not much was used on them especially the bigger tractors everything waa traiiled such as discs, cultivators and planters generally tractors were not used for haulage and the UK type of tipping trailer was unheard of .The abig grain chaser bins were just coming in style but no one would dream of using them to cart to a store. In California we used side tipping trailers when opening out tomato fields and then we used tractors to pull double artic trailers but every farm had a lorry for produce hauling. Usually seed and fertiliser came in bulk in Florida artic trailers with four tipping bins were dropped in the field powered by a donkey engine you then pulled alongside with your fertliser tender and tipped a bin in. On none of the farms i worked on was there a need for a rough terrain forklift or telehandler a small yard forklift was enough.In Tennessee i used to move my tractor and sprayer from place to place on a twin axle goose neck trailer pulled by a Ford f250 pickup.

 

[Farmer Roy]

Wow - US farmers do things differently to the UK

who would have thought it ?

people sound surprised, even confused, by the idea . . .

 

[yellowfrog]

they sure seem to love shovelling corn,beans, wheat you name it in their bins!!!!!!!

 

[kiwi pom]

I watched the Millennial farmer maul his Bo**ocks off the other day putting a "quick hitch" on his ball end equipped 6175R so he could hook up his snow blower. If he had quick attach arms on the tractor he could have it hitched no problem and the weight wouldn't have been so far back

The grain bin thing is interesting, cheap to put up but not very versatile and they do seem to spend a lot of time transferring and shovelling.
I've no real problem with that but Zach has been raising money for emergency service training to help those trapped in grain bins. Apparently lives are lost regularly. I do have a problem with that.

 

[Blaithin]

Most are switching to hopper bottom bins. Unless they’re big barstewards that have bin sweeps installed. Grain vacs are also common. Shovelling is only done by guys who have prioritized other things and are willing to get in and shovel.

Transferring is for quality control. Core the bins to help cool them down, stay on top of bugs and heating. Get a check on quality. Make sure nothings going on inside.

Safety issues are usually complacency. Local guy here died last fall because he fell trying to jump from one bin to the other. That’s hardly the bins fault... In most cases you can’t fix stupid. Guys go years getting into bins and never have an issue so they keep doing it. But unfortunately one day there is an issue and they’re working alone or it’s just so catastrophic that it’s a big issue. If we ever go into bins at work it’s with air monitors, harnessed up, with SRLs to pull us out and at least 4 people on the “job”. It’s treated as a confined space. OH&S hasn’t reached that level with the on farm version.

 

[Deerefarmer]

We have 1 tractor in our fleet with a pickup hitch, (a used import we bought from uk) If you were switching multiple small implements I could see the benefits of them, otherwise I see them as unsafe. I've had ours off twice due to broken mounting bolts. Have never had that happen with our standard draw bar setup.

The hook end 3pl arms are definitely a must. We order all tractors with hook ends.
Ball end or whatever they call the standard American 3pl hookup is ridiculous and needs to change imo

 

[glasshouse]

I'd rather watch YouTube than TV now and enjoy seeing farmers in other countries . I follow a quite few, Millennial Farmer and 10th Generation Dairyman being a couple of them.
What suprises me is how Americans use skidsteers as their main loaders. Surley loading shovels or telehanders would be more practical
They seem to very rarley use the 3 point hitch , even for light implements and tow small tedders and seed drills ect with a clevis draw bar
The PUH was a godsend when it was brought out. I am supprised that PUH 's have not made it over the pond

The yanks have always had some daft ideas, like no puh, driving on the wrong side and putting petrol engines in sherman tanks

 

[Blaithin]

The yanks have always had some daft ideas, like no puh, driving on the wrong side and putting petrol engines in sherman tanks

It may be the wrong side, but technically it’s the right side. UK can’t say that

Lefties used to be beaten and thought to be possessed by the devil